Here are 57 books that Wild Fell fans have personally recommended if you like
Wild Fell.
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My interest in healing and nature stems from a very particular source—my own search for answers in the wake of my wife’s premature death in 2007. I’d read somewhere that loss often either engulfs someone or propels them forward, and I didn’t want to end up in the former category, particularly as I had a young daughter to look after. So this list represents an urgent personal quest that started years ago and still continues to this day. The books have been a touchstone, a vital support, and a revelation—pieces in the jigsaw of a recovery still incomplete. I hope they help others as they’ve helped me.
I love the grittiness of this—an account of a walk along the South West Coast path, when terminal illness and poverty haunt the walkers and everything is in a state of flux.
It doesn’t glamorize the walk; it’s often uncomfortable with lots of biting wind and pouring rain. At times, there are even threats from others they come across who are sleeping rough. Overall, it’s a description of nature at its most raw and authentic.
Although we glimpse moments of inspiration and beauty, I like the fact, as well, that it doesn’t have a big, blowsy Hollywood ending—at the close, the future appears uncertain, although there is a definite sense that a new energy has been discovered.
It ends on a simple, perfect moment as the author describes her and her husband as “lightly salted blackberries hanging in the summer sun” and adds significantly that’s “all that is…
"Polished, poignant... an inspiring story of true love."-Entertainment Weekly
A BEST BOOK OF 2019, NPR's Book Concierge SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARD OVER 400,000 COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE
The true story of a couple who lost everything and embarked on a transformative journey walking the South West Coast Path in England
Just days after Raynor Winn learns that Moth, her husband of thirty-two years, is terminally ill, their house and farm are taken away, along with their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’ve always wanted my work to have meaning beyond the paycheck, and for some reason, my mind automatically seems to drift toward the bigger picture. During my career, I have watched environmental issues change from being distant concerns to a flat-out crisis that we may well have ignored until it is too late. I think the issue of humanity being able to thrive with respect for each other, other species, and the planet itself is the one that matters most.
When I started reading this book, I thought, ‘I don’t even care if it’s a load of rubbish, because it feels so good just to read something nice about our species for a change’. A bonus is that, far from rubbish, it turns out to be extremely well-grounded and evidence-based.
I found this challenge to the negative stories we tell about human nature to be so refreshing and uplifting.
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A Guardian, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Daily Express Book of the Year
'Hugely, highly and happily recommended' Stephen Fry 'You should read Humankind. You'll learn a lot (I did) and you'll have good reason to feel better about the human race' Tim Harford 'Made me see humanity from a fresh perspective' Yuval Noah Harari
It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have…
I've spent over 15 years as an organizational coach, watching businesses struggle with challenges nature has solved and been fine-tuning over billions of years. This frustration led me to a six-month biomimicry programme where I researched and studied how natural systems actually organize themselves. As a circular economy professional and organization in action of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab, I've seen how businesses attempting sustainability transitions often fail not from lack of technical knowledge but from organisational structures that impede evolution. These books have been my companion on my journey from recognizing the problem to discovering nature's proven solutions, and ultimately writing my own book to share those research insights with others facing similar challenges.
Raworth articulates something I'd felt but couldn't express: that our current economic models are fundamentally flawed, simultaneously transgressing planetary boundaries whilst leaving billions below social foundations.
Her doughnut framework—depicting the safe and just space between social foundations and ecological ceilings—clarifies the "why of work.”
I love how she challenges conventional economic thinking with such clarity and wit. When she explains why GDP growth can't be our goal, or why economies are embedded within society and nature (not the other way around), it feels both radical and obvious.
As a member organization of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab, I've seen how this framework helps businesses understand their purpose beyond profit.
This book provides the destination; my work explores the organizational navigation, the concrete patterns and structures that enable businesses to actually operate in that safe and just space.
800-CEO-Read "Best Business Book of 2017: Current Events & Public Affairs"
Economics is the mother tongue of public policy. It dominates our decision-making for the future, guides multi-billion-dollar investments, and shapes our responses to climate change, inequality, and other environmental and social challenges that define our times.
Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike.
That's why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth,…
Former model Kira McGovern picks up the paint brushes of her youth and through an unexpected epiphany she decides to mix ashes of the deceased with her paints to produce tributes for grieving families.
Unexpectedly this leads to visions and images of the subjects of her work and terrifying changes…
I’ve always wanted my work to have meaning beyond the paycheck, and for some reason, my mind automatically seems to drift toward the bigger picture. During my career, I have watched environmental issues change from being distant concerns to a flat-out crisis that we may well have ignored until it is too late. I think the issue of humanity being able to thrive with respect for each other, other species, and the planet itself is the one that matters most.
If only the government had adopted every single one of the recommendations laid down in this book. This book is the chatty, summarised version of the National Food Strategy that Henry Dimbleby put together with great care and attention.
Almost everything here chimes with my own personal findings, but he adds to them and brings everything together with a coherent and practical way forward for health, climate, nature, and the economy.
'Ravenous is a revelation: a fast-paced, entertaining and often jaw-dropping guide to the modern food system, why it is putting us all in danger, and how we can escape its clutches' Andi Oliver, Chef and Broadcaster
'An unputdownable, fast-paced, cracking good read ... there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Henry Dimbleby's book Ravenous could change the world, or at any rate the UK' Prue Leith
A manifesto for revolutionising our food system
You may not be aware of this - not consciously, at least - but you…
I write nonfiction books for children and teens that focus on current environmental stories. But environmental headlines are usually gloomy and filled with foreboding, so, I prefer to focus on stories that involve individuals identifying an environmental problem and working to develop a solution – hence this list of happy conservation stories. The stories in this list – and many others – are the antidote to the headlines. They are the hope. They show human ingenuity at its most creative, most flexible, and most caring. Happy conservation stories empower kids, teens, and adults to care about the role they play in nature and unite them in action.
Rewilding is a book for older readers (ages 8+) organized in a browseable format.
The authors give a brief two-page overview of several conservation success stories. You’ll find some overlap between Rewilding’s stories and books I’ve written, like freeing the Elwha River (A River’s Gifts) and re-introducing black-footed ferrets into the wild (Zoo Scientists to the Rescue), but you’ll also find new stories about rattlesnakes, snot otters, Arabian oryx, tigers, meat-eating plants, and more.
⭐ Selected as one of the Best Nature Books of 2022 by Kirkus Reviews ⭐ ⭐ Selected as one of the Best Informational Books of 2022 for Older Readers by Chicago Public Library ⭐
"A book worth returning to multiple times. A fascinating primer on the intricacies of ecosystems." -- Kirkus, starred review
Discover inspiring stories of wildlife brought back from the brink of extinction – a perfect gift for kids who care about the environment!
Rewilding means returning animals or plants to places where they used to live. In this book, acclaimed conservation biologist and science communicator David A.…
Working as a social anthropologist in Uganda, Ghana, Malaysia, and Catalonia, I became fascinated by villages as microcosms of broader social change, places where history can be observed in the making through the lives and histories of families and of their members. Villages are anything but ‘natural’ communities or social backwaters. They survive (or perish) because people, beliefs, and goods are continually moving in and out. Village lives are certainly shaped by state and society, but the impact goes both ways. Each of my selected books tells a gripping and distinctive story of villagers grappling with social and cultural tension, the forces of change, and the challenges of survival.
This too is a tale of three village generations grappling with historical change.
Here the story is about changing ideas of stewardship of the land, an enthralling account of farming ways in flux and of the intricate, back-breaking, and unpredictable work of restoring degraded farmland to health.
The Rebanks family run a hill-farm in a Lake District village. Rebanks’ grandfather started with horse-ploughs. A tractor replaced the horses, yet he still knew the individual ways of every ewe and cow and farmed lightly on the land. But Rebanks’ father, caught in market pressures, industrialized his farming methods.
Progressbecame the mantra of all the village farmers, including the young Rebanks himself.
Today, although they recognize the precarity of their livelihood and the damage to the land, most see no alternative to intensifying production. When Rebanks decides to switch to regenerative farming to preserve the land for future generations, his fellow…
The new bestseller from the author of The Shepherd's Life
'A beautifully written story of a family, a home and a changing landscape' Nigel Slater
As a boy, James Rebanks's grandfather taught him to work the land the old way. Their family farm in the Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, it was barely recognisable. The men and women had vanished from the…
Rusty Allen is an Iraqi War veteran with PTSD. He moves to his grandfather's cabin in the mountains to find some peace and go back to wilderness training.
He gets wrapped up in a kidnapping first, as a suspect and then as a guide. He tolerates the sheriff's deputy with…
I’ve been fascinated by wildlife since the age of 5, and 60 years later I’m still addicted. I worked as a research scientist on bats and birds and then morphed into a nature conservationist. I worked for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds for 25 years – 13 years as the Conservation Director. I’ve written books about wildlife and its conservation and regularly review such books on my blog. I hope that my work has made a difference and that my books, and other authors’ books, can move things on a bit quicker too.
Helm is an Oxford University economist, a wildlife enthusiast, and former chair of the UK’s Natural Capital Committee. He is an outsider inside the system.
Should we put an economic value on nature? If you worry about this then you must read this book.
If you know a bit more than Helm does about wildlife, as I think I do, then he trips now and again (but never falls flat on his face) whereas if you know less about economics than Helm does (as I certainly do) it is difficult to detect whether or not he gallops sure-footedly across the terrain.
This book, though, is a very good read - I agreed with much of it and was interested by all of it.
'One of the most important books of the decade' Country Life
Finally, a practical, realistic plan to rescue, preserve and enhance nature.
News about Britain's wildlife and ecosystems tends to be grim. In Green and Prosperous Land, Oxford economist and Natural Capital Committee chair Dieter Helm shares his radical but tangible plan for positive change.
This pragmatic approach to environmentalism includes a summary of Britain's green assets, a look towards possible futures and an achievable 25-year plan for a green and prosperous country. The bold generational plan assesses the environment as a whole, explains the necessity of protecting and enhancing…
Since my late teens, I have traveled extensively in wilderness areas across the United States and Alaska, as well as in Canada, Switzerland, and Patagonia. Backpacking, technical mountain climbing, and canoeing have led me to appreciate wilderness for its own sake and to become a fierce advocate for its protection. Since moving to Seattle in 1982, I have hiked extensively in the western mountains and experienced a profound sense of peace and wonder in the wild. The listed books have deepened my appreciation of the wild's intrinsic value. I have tried to convey this appreciation to my readers in my three novels set in the American West.
Roderick Nash’s brilliantly argued and thoroughly researched book was the bedrock of a course I designed on American Environmental Literature while teaching humanities at a community college. As a published scholar, I deeply appreciate the logic of Nash’s arguments and the historical sweep of his narrative.
Nash chronicles the prevailing opinions of early “settlers” as they encountered and then began fulfilling the biblical injunction to “tame” the “new Eden” they had discovered: their reactions to the Native people, whom they readily labeled “savages” (i.e., not European civilized); the amazing and dangerous wildlife, especially in the American West; and the huge battles beginning in the 1960s to preserve what was then still untamed on the North American continent.
Roderick Nash's classic study of America's changing attitudes toward wilderness has received wide acclaim since its initial publication in 1967. The Los Angeles Times has listed it among the one hundred most influential books published in the last quarter century, Outside Magazine has included it in a survey of "books that changed our world", and it has been called the "Book of Genesis for environmentalists". Now a fourth edition of this highly regarded work is available, with a new preface and epilogue in which Nash explores the future of wilderness and reflects on its ethical and biocentric relevance.
I love being outdoors and I’ve been fortunate to spend much of life under the open sky, both professionally and personally. Learning about the landscapes I’ve visited on my outdoor adventures or helped protect through my professional conservation and writing work is both fulfilling and inspiring. Skilled writers deepen my understanding of the diverse, intricate, and complicated natural world. Whether I’m reading to better understand the policies and histories that have shaped our public lands or about the adventurers who inspire me to get out there, I always find immense value and enjoyment when reading about the landscapes we share.
Aldo Leopold was a Forest Service ranger stationed in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest when he first began advocating for a new approach to managing national forests. Leopold’s visionary thinking and diligent advocacy resulted in the first-ever Wilderness Area in the U.S.—the Gila Wilderness Area, established in 1922—more than 40 years before the Wilderness Act was passed by Congress in 1964. A Sand County Almanac is Leopold’s best-known work and follows his efforts to restore a patch of cut-over farmland in Wisconsin while also articulating his vision of a land ethic where humans and nature are intertwined and care for people cannot be separated from care for the land. His beautiful writing resonated strongly with me when I first read A Sand County Almanac more than two decades ago, and his vision remains as important now as ever.
Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac has enthralled generations of nature lovers and conservationists and is indeed revered by everyone seriously interested in protecting the natural world. Hailed for prose that is "full of beauty and vigor and bite" (The New York Times), it is perhaps the finest example of nature writing since Thoreau's Walden. Now this classic work is available in a completely redesigned and lavishly illustrated gift edition, featuring over one hundred beautiful full-color pictures by Michael Sewell, one of the country's leading nature photographers. Sewell, whose work has graced the pages of Audubon and Sierra magazines, walked…
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
Menno Schilthuizen is a Dutch evolutionary biologist and ecologist with more than thirty years of research experience under his belt, feeling at home in tropical rainforests as well as in urban greenspaces. He writes in a humorous and accessible manner for the general public about the ways in which the world's ecosystems are shifting and evolving under an increasing human presence. He works and teaches at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands.
When speaking of the role of technology in nature conservation, one might envisage drones to survey habitat destruction, or endangered elephants with radio collars. But technology might go much further. In this book, the authors show how genetics could help us to re-engineer species, even entire food webs to meet the environmental challenges of the future.
A groundbreaking examination of the implications of synthetic biology for biodiversity conservation
"What is natural and what is artificial in the era of the Anthropocene? This is the core question addressed by Kent Redford and William Adams' book, Strange Natures. . . . It is impressive how the book manages to be so rich in perspectives on such a complex and controversial phenomenon, yet so cautiously and open-mindedly written that it invites contemplation and reflection rather than hasty conclusions."-Adam Wickberg, Global Environmental Politics
Nature almost everywhere survives on human terms. The distinction between what is natural and what is human-made,…
